2017 News

Here you can read all of the latest news articles from 2017. Please select from the list below by clicking to read the article.

Making Tax Digital

We’re moving swiftly towards Digital Taxation and are now only a year away from the next stage of implementation. Over 98% of Corporation Tax Returns and 99% of VAT Returns are now submitted online and HMRC are moving towards a complete online service. The new personal digital account already includes details or earned income and will in future include bank interest and dividend income to assist the tax assessment process.

From around July 2018 those with a sole trader or partnership business will need to complete a quarterly submission of data to HMRC to assist with Income Tax and National Insurance. Software providers are working to ensure that their software will comply with the new requirements and this will remove the “once a year” Tax submission that business has been using for many years. Quarterly submissions will enable HMRC to assess a business to tax four times a year and the anticipation is that this will quickly lead to quarterly tax payments.

From July 2019 Capital Gains Tax (CGT) will fall within the scheme and Capital Gains Tax arising on property sales will have to be paid within 30 days of completion. This means almost real time tax payment for such tax and is a radical departure from the current system in terms of timing.

HMRC estimate that by summer 2020 the scheme will expand to cover Corporation Tax and so all Limited companies will need to submit quarterly returns. You can be sure that quarterly tax payments will follow soon afterwards and so by late 2020 all business’ will be assessing (and paying) tax every three months.

Whilst it’s easy to think this is all in the future, some of these changes are only a year away and you need to think about how your business will be impacted by the changes.